No compassionate person would buy or wear fur. But what about wool? The facts often surprise people—lambs and sheep suffer greatly for the wool clothing that many people wear.
Contrary to industry propaganda depicting happy sheep who are lovingly shorn of their "excess" fleece, the wool industry is an ugly business. No amount of fluff can hide the fact that buying wool supports a cruel industry in which lambs and sheep suffer while they're alive and often die a terrifying death. Please support PETA today to help save sheep and other animals from such abuse.
PETA's investigations of farms in Australia—the world's top wool producer—have helped to expose this industry's horrendous hidden cruelty to animals.
Helpless lambs are forced onto their backs, and chunks of skin and flesh are hacked from their rumps with gardening-type shears—often without the use of anything whatsoever to numb the pain. This crude, barbaric practice is called "mulesing." This practice is intended to stop flies from laying eggs in the sheep's wrinkled skin (although there are lots of humane ways to do so) but leaves the animals with open, bloody wounds that often become infested with maggots.
The cruelty doesn't stop there. Once some poor sheep are unable to produce enough volumes of wool to satisfy the farmers, they are shipped to slaughterhouses in the Middle East and North Africa. Each year, millions of sheep are crammed so tightly onto boats that animals who are ill or injured often collapse and are trampled to death. Some suffer exposure to the elements, including storms at sea and must stand amid their own accumulating excrement. For many, the journey is fatal. The terrified survivors are dragged from the ships and thrown into the back of trucks and cars or loaded into trucks in the heat and taken to crude slaughterhouses—only to have their throats cut while conscious.
By making a tax-deductible gift to PETA today, you will help us stand up for all the lambs, sheep and other animals whose suffering has been carefully concealed until now.
PETA's international campaign to protect abused lambs and sheep is gaining ground, and we are building the momentum that we need to win. We've already helped compel dozens of leading designers and retailers—including Abercrombie & Fitch, Liz Claiborne Inc., H&M, HUGO BOSS, Perry Ellis, Nike, and Adidas—to join our campaign against mulesing and the suffering that it causes. We've also helped bring about a sea change in public awareness of the treatment of these gentle animals and the pain that they are forced to endure.